Rahul Bhagat, the director of operations for the Pebble smartwatch, is soft spoken, calm, and collected.

Within the first two minutes of speaking with him it's easy to tell that he is very passionate about the product his company will finally start shipping to the first group of people who backed the project on Kickstarter.

Bhagat is Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky's right-hand man. The two met at the University of Waterloo and previously worked on designing a smartwatch for BlackBerry.

The Pebble guys learned a lot from the BlackBerry endeavor. Primarily, they wanted to make a device with a low price and an e-ink display like the one on your Kindle so the watch could be seen in direct sunlight. E-ink also allows the watch to have very long battery life.

Now they have Pebble, the a digital smartwatch that syncs with Android phones and iPhones wirelessly using Bluetooth. The Pebble vibrates when you receive an alert on your smartphone such as a text message, Facebook notification, or email. Besides notifications, the smartwatch can control your phone's music or ping you when you get a phone call.

PebblePebble's CEO Eric Migicovsky.

Pebble, took the Internet by storm last summer, bringing in $10 million on Kickstarter. It was the biggest campaign to date.

Pebble got to keep about $9 million of the $10 million it raised because Kickstarter charges a 5% fee and Amazon took another 4% to process the credit card transactions.

That $9 million is going towards manufacturing to fulfill orders, research and development, and salaries so the company can hire more skilled engineers, Bhagat said.

All of the hype surrounding Pebble was both good and bad for the company. "[The hype] has its pros and cons," Bhagat said. "We got a lot of opinions from backers...but on the negative side there ends up being people that are so anxious to get the device that every time there's a delay or non-ship date, they get upset."

Pebbles start shipping today, Jan. 23, but the company says it'll take at least six weeks to fulfill all the orders.

"We're not worried about that at all, we cover both markets, Apple and Android. I think we have a great device and it'll be exciting to see what Apple comes up with," Bhagat said.

Because Pebble is a watch that you're expected to wear all the time, we wondered what Pebble thinks users should do with their older watches.

"For me, Pebble is my only watch," Bhagat said. "I didn't use watches before Pebble so the functionality is great. We're not hoping to replace users Rolexes, but see our device as a more practical watch for everyday use."

For those who still want to get in on the smartwatch, you can pre-order one now for $150 on Pebble's website.